My memory is incredibly bad and I still managed to finish my studies :) Remembering important information about your work (e.g., critical papers) comes naturally. You will be talking about these things for three-four years - they will eventually stick. Having said that, in most of my meetings I had to go back to papers and notes to make sure I'm not making false claims, which only made me more careful and thorough. You don't have to memorise anything :)

I 100% agree with pm133 :)

Best of luck, TQ!

Hi TQ,

I was recently offered a postdoc position and waiting to hear back from another one, both of which I found on professional listservs. If I remember right, you are in Psychology? APA has listservs for different sub-areas of Psychology (e.g., Division 8 - social psych). Big names in the field (from both EU and US) seem to be advertising available positions on these servers. I definitely think it's worth having a look!

ZR

Check PM

Hello,

I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm a 2nd year PhD in Psychology (psychobiology/neurosciences). Out of the 8 PhDs in my cohort, only one (also in her 2nd year) has managed to publish something from her first year experiments, and only because her studies are done online. She can run 3 experiments at the same time and collect all the data she needs within 3 hours of putting it online.

It depends on your project, I guess. To be honest, publishing something in your first year is extremely rare unless you've been working on that project before starting your PhD. Data collection and writing-up a paper always takes longer than what you expect. Also, most good journals (APA) will make you jump through hoops to get things published. With the recent reproducibility crisis it is very likely that they will ask you to replicate your findings before considering publishing it. It's a long and tedious process...

My supervisors (even before the PhD) have always told me to focus on quality rather than quantity. Don't think about how many publications you need to get - focus on publishing studies that are highly influential. No-one is impressed by a bunch of studies published in low-quality journals.. Meta-analyses are VERY time consuming - I would go for a literature review instead...

Hope that helps!

ZR

Hi everyone,

I'm doing Psychology/Neurosciences - We had this reproducibility crisis in 2015 and journals are more careful about what they are publishing now.

Hi everyone,

Many thanks for the advice. My supervisors see the problem with repeating the same experiment but they don't appear to be stressed about it... It's not a matter of being fast at testing - I'm working with special populations so recruiting is a nightmare.. Getting them to come to the lab once is a struggle, let alone 2 or 3 times!

ZR

Hi everyone,

A couple of weeks ago I got the reviews for my first paper. The editor has asked for a replication which, essentially, means that I will be spending half of my 2nd year running the same experiment I run last year. Since it will be an exact replication of my first experiment it won't be adding anything new to my thesis.

I had another experiment ready to go but it will be pushed back as a result of the editor's decision.

I'm scared that I won't have enough experiments to write up a thesis in 1,5 years from now and I'm starting to panic. I was wondering how many chapters/experiments should be included in a thesis? I understand that this is a very subject-specific question and that there aren't any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to thesis contents..

I'm a bit overwhelmed and, quite frankly, scared that I won't finish in 3 years. My funding runs out at the end of my 3rd year and I can't afford sticking around for a fourth year :(

Best,

ZR

I think that if we stick with it for the full 3-4 years we will all eventually get the degree.. whether it's with minor or major revisions is another story!

I'm scared that my work will not be of publishable quality in terms of results :(

Congratulations Dr. Eska!!! Very well done!

Best of luck for tomorrow Eska! Let us know how it goes!

ZR

Congratulation DR. theboakster!